The Golden Boy, page 9
“Pull your arm back all the way, Debbie,” she would say. “Watch how Agnes does it. Linda, get away from the wall! You girls at the end! Yes, you two! I said ten minutes of drown-proofing! Not ten seconds! Ten minutes! Sheesh!”
Little Agnes Gardener disliked the girls who didn’t listen to Arlene and didn’t seem to care about pulling their knees all the way up before kicking them out again, but she knew by then that she didn’t like very many people. At first, her mother came with her to the swimming pool, but after a while she walked Agnes to the bus stop and saw that she got onto the right bus, and after that it wasn’t very long before she lost interest in Agnes and her swimming lessons altogether. But Agnes did not lose interest, and every Saturday morning at nine o’clock she rolled her oversize bathing suit into a towel and walked to the bus stop. “Don’t cut across the park,” her mother would tell her. “Stay on the sidewalk near the swings. Promise me, Agnes.” And Agnes would nod. And if it bothered her that nobody was there to see her finally master the front crawl, she kept it to herself. Agnes cared only for what she could be certain of.
And she was certain now, certain that Stafford could not get himself out of the mess he was in without her help, and equally certain that she would probably drown trying to save him, her stomach full of arugula and grilled scallops, her legs freshly waxed, and the top coat of her manicure not yet set.
Don’t think about it.
She was afraid of these uncontrolled situations. She was afraid of the water beneath her and all its terrible creatures.
Don’t think about it.
She needed screens on windows and double locks on solid doors and alarm systems that protected them from intruders. Their houses were built to last forever, or at least for a very long time, and if she and Stafford spent more than other people on wood and brick and limestone and granite, it was because home was a fragile thing for both of them.
Don’t think about it.
The walls of the city were gone, and they had built new ones. Embedding the cornerstones deep into earth where they would not be forgotten or disturbed.
Don’t think about it.
But Agnes tired quickly and her shoulder began to cramp with pain. The water was so much colder out here, and the waves, she realized, were a problem. Little hills of water. It was much harder out here. She could no longer see Stafford above the swell of the waves. She wanted to see where he was. And she seemed to have dropped that noodle thing. It wasn’t in her hand anymore. When had she dropped it? She began to tread water, trying to see over the rise of each wave as it lifted her up, but still she couldn’t see Stafford. She could not see him.
“Stafford!” she called. “Stafford, where are you?” There was no answer, though, because he was gone. Stafford was gone.
Kick from the knees, girls! Swing your arms up—not your whole body! Three strokes each side, Agnes! Three strokes! Stretch and pull! Now glide, Agnes! Glide!
Oh, Arlene, where are you now? You and your whistle and your certainty that enthusiasm is enough.
Agnes let her body fall forward with her arms and legs extended out in four directions, floating on the water like a dead person. She would drown-proof. Just ten minutes. She could certainly handle that. Arlene would be proud. She would float and rest, gently lifting her head ever so slightly above the surface of the water, taking in what little air she needed. Float, lift, and breathe. Float, lift, and breathe. Swimming was too difficult now, but there was no point in drowning before she absolutely had to. She would rest and try not to think what to do and maybe it would come to her later, and maybe she would not have to make the decision herself. She would rest. Float, lift, and breathe. It was so easy.
“Agnes,” he said. “Agnes, I’m here.”
“Hmm.”
“Agnes.”
She lifted her head, letting the rest of her body sink deeper into the water, and she looked up and there he was. There he was, a few feet away from her, clutching that silly noodle thing to his chest like a newborn baby and saying her name in a voice so hoarse she could hardly make it out. Well, she would have to try a little harder now. She would have to kick and pull her arms out of the water properly and make a final effort to return. They must have looked ridiculous, she thought later, floundering around out there—so close to the shoreline really but so clearly incapable of reaching it. She finally settled on the sidestroke, a favorite of Arlene’s and one that allowed her to paddle slowly next to Stafford who, they both knew, would sink like a stone without the noodle beneath him.
Neither of them would remember the last part, but when they finally felt their feet hit the sandy bottom and were tossed onto the beach like two dead fish, it seemed a small crowd had gathered in their absence and was waiting for them.
“Holy Dinah! Thought you folks were a couple of goners there!”
“Get them some towels. They’re shaking.”
“Here, take mine.”
“That’s my towel, Mommy.”
“Oh, Taylor, please.”
“Put your head down, mister. Between your knees. That’s it.”
“I want my towel back.”
“Stop whining, Taylor. The man needs a towel.”
“It’s rough out there. What the hell were you doing out there?”
“I thought about going in, but it was too rough.”
“I want my towel!”
“Are you folks okay? I know first aid.”
“Mommy!”
“Taylor!”
“I heard a man drowned Thursday.”
“It was Wednesday.”
“That’s right. At Makena.”
“It was Lanai. At Polihua.”
“Oh, that was another guy.”
“Two guys drowned?”
“Yeah. But one was local.”
“Mommy!”
“Oh, for gosh sakes. Look, mister, I’m sorry. But would you mind? The towel, I mean.”
“What?”
“It’s her favorite towel. She’s only six.”
Stafford lifted his head from between his legs and looked at Agnes, who lay on the sand next to him, and they began to laugh. And they continued laughing, almost out of control really, just as they had earlier, driving down the hillside from their beautiful home to their beautiful tennis club at the start of their beautiful day. He paused once to throw up the seawater he had swallowed, and she reached out her manicured hand and patted him gently on the back while he vomited freely into the sand. And then they laughed again until the crowd finally began to disperse, vaguely insulted by the ingratitude they perceived from these vomiting tourists, too stupid to stay out of dangerous water on treacherous days.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when they finally arrived home. Agnes parked the car at a bad angle in front of the house and they left it there without discussion about lining it up properly or moving it into the garage or parking it around the side where it wouldn’t block the driveway. Instead, they went into the house through the main entrance, opening the massive doors handcrafted from Honduran rosewood, cut against the grain at great expense. They felt unreasonably tired now and too weary to pick up the pieces of a regular day. Agnes knew she should call Cheryl Sasson and explain her no-show at the golf game. She knew she should phone the caterers and tell them the dinner on Friday would include two extra guests, one of whom didn’t eat fish or strawberries. She had promised the florist a final decision about the arrangements for the front hall tables. She had a pair of white slacks that needed to be dry-cleaned by Saturday. She was not happy with the reception on the TV set in her morning room. The bar sink tap was leaking.
We should be different people now, she thought. We should know something.
But it was too daunting to imagine what that might be and too exhausting to plan for it at this point in the day. Instead they walked through the cool rooms of their house in complete silence and then down the wide hallway and into the wing of the house that contained their private rooms. They went into separate dressing rooms and then into separate bathrooms, where they filled separate bathtubs with hot water. They dropped the remnants of their clothing on the floor and stepped carefully, gratefully into their baths, letting the steaming water embrace their weary bones.
For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, the telephone seemed to ring incessantly, but they were not interested in talking and did not answer it. Instead they sat outside on the elegant poolside recliners, wrapped in the soft cotton robes their tax accountant had sent them for Christmas that year with the little card from Saks wishing them seasonal joy.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him, and he said no, he wasn’t hungry, but she went into the kitchen anyway, and when she returned, she carried a tray with poached eggs on buttered toast and bowls of applesauce and tea to drink.
“Perfect,” he said. “Nursery food.”
“Nursery food?”
“Food for children. You know, toast cut into pieces. An egg. Jell-O. That kind of food. Nursery food.”
“It must be a Canadian thing.”
“British, actually.”
“British people don’t eat Jell-O.”
“My mother used to bring me nursery food when I was a little boy. When I was sick, I mean. Just like this. All on a tray.”
“Hmm.”
“Didn’t you ever get your dinner on a tray, Agnes? When you were little and sick?”
“My mother,” she reminded him, “was a heroin addict. I don’t think she knew about dinner on a tray.”
“Right.”
“Is your egg okay, Stafford?”
“My egg, Agnes, is perfect.”
The light fades quickly on Maui, and the transition to darkness is swift. The night descends in easy shadows until all of a sudden it is quite dark outside when only a few minutes earlier it was not. Stafford and Agnes rarely sat out at night, and only when friends were present and the pool and lanais were lit with the understated ambience of lighting designed to show off the house and its inhabitants. But tonight was unusual. They had come through an ordeal together and it had confused them.
Stafford knew that the why of things was Aristotle’s primary and final cause, that intelligence and reason and insight, logos, could not be realized without an attempt, however clumsy, to grasp the why of things. Why lay at the heart of the matter, at the very center of logos, because it was the only question that looked beyond the obvious. But Stafford knew also that the beauty of philosophy rarely lay in its answers, and he disliked people who concocted mysterious explanations for everyday events. What had happened to them was disturbing, but it was a natural reality that people who get caught in riptides have a difficult time of it.
“But why?” he asked himself then and in the months that followed, as if unable to leave the matter alone. “Why?”
He looked across at his wife, who had closed her eyes and let one hand drop to her side. She had fallen asleep. He thought he should wake her and tell her that night had come and it was time to go inside the house again. But perhaps he would wait until the stars came out and the air grew cool.
“A stargazer,” the midwife had said to his father on the night of Stafford’s birth. “You’ve got yourself a stargazer.”
It was not long before Stafford fell asleep too, lying on the recliner next to his wife’s, and they slept outside the whole night, which was something they had not done before and would never do again. And in the moments before the sun rose, Stafford woke up to hear the birds in full throttle, as his mother might say, as if they had all woken up together.
He went into the house, thinking he would get a blanket for Agnes and maybe check the phone messages and the mail. He would make a pot of coffee and he would see if there was anything nice he could make for breakfast. He was stiff from a night on a deck chair, of course, and his scraped hands and knees were surprisingly painful, but all in all he felt pretty good for a man of his age. He felt okay. He was a rational man with sensible desires. He put the coffee on and used a kitchen knife to open the letters, setting them aside into various piles—the bills and industry magazines, corporate reports and financial updates—until he came at last to the letter from Ontario with the word Shepherd written on the back of the envelope. How disturbing it was to realize, even as he read this letter for the very first time, that had it arrived a month, a week, or even a single day earlier, his response would have been so different.
He was still sitting at the counter with the letter in front of him when his wife came into the kitchen. She was very stiff this morning, she said, and would need emergency massage treatment if she were to limber up by Friday.
“I can’t believe we slept outside. I am so stiff! I can hardly move. I’ll never play tennis again. Look how tight my shoulder is! I can’t even lift it. Is that coffee? What time did you wake up? Ouch! Why is this coffee cup so heavy? I’m going to call that massage girl—Maggie something—she’s good. She can come to the house later. Do you need a massage? It’s too early to call her, isn’t it? I think I’ll go lie down, Stafford.”
“Wait,” he said. “Wait a minute. We have to talk.”
“It’s six thirty in the morning, Stafford. I need to stretch out. We can talk later.”
“Agnes, please.”
“Wake me up at eight, darling.”
“Agnes, there’s a letter,” he said, and then she stopped because his voice was strained and unnatural.
“Is it Callie?” she asked.
“No, no, it’s not Callie. It’s some other kids.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘other kids’?”
“There are some kids, Agnes. Some children.”
“Stafford.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Well, try.”
“I had no idea. It’s a complete surprise to me.”
“Just give me the letter.”
“No.”
“Stafford!”
“All right, all right. Please. Agnes. Just let me explain.”
“Fine. Explain.”
“Marilyn and Donny Shepherd have been killed in a car accident, Agnes, and they’ve left us their children. Well, me, actually. They’ve left me their children.”
“And who are Marilyn and Donny Shepherd?”
“Marilyn is Donny’s wife. Was.”
“Stafford, please. I’m trying to be patient.”
“Donny was born after his father died, all right, and the Shepherds took him in.”
“Stafford!”
“Don’t interrupt me, please, Agnes! Just let me think. Carrie Ann—Donny’s mother—left Kingston after Donny was born but she didn’t take him with her. She left him with Bobby’s parents, she left him with the Shepherds. Well, what else could she do, Agnes? She was only fifteen for Christ’s sake!”
“Excuse me?”
“She gave him up, okay! His grandparents raised him. I don’t know what else to tell you, Agnes. I didn’t stay in touch with any of these people. What was the point? I barely knew Carrie Ann. She was Bobby’s girlfriend, not mine.”
“Stafford, who are these dead people with all the children!”
“Donny Shepherd grew up, Agnes. He grew up and he married someone named Marilyn and they had some children. And now they’re dead, that’s all. Donny and Marilyn Shepherd are now dead. They were killed in a car accident, Agnes.”
“I’m very sorry to hear about these people dying in a car accident, Stafford. I really am. But you seem to be leaving out the important part.”
“They had some children.”
“They had some children.”
“Yes.”
“Stafford!”
“I don’t know why, Agnes. I don’t have an explanation for you. But apparently Donny Shepherd named me guardian of his children. He never asked me. But he did and I am.”
“What? You are what?”
“I am the legally appointed guardian of Donny and Marilyn Shepherd’s children.”
“How many?”
“Three. No, four. There’s a baby.”
“I don’t like other people’s children, Stafford. I never have.”
“I know that, Agnes. I understand.”
“Well, you’ll just have to decline, that’s all. You’ll have to go and tell whoever thinks they’re in charge of this—this ridiculous fucking mess, Stafford—and tell them no. Just no! No! No!”
“Agnes, please don’t yell.”
“Well, what do you expect me to say? We don’t know these people, Stafford! We are fifty-eight years old!”
“I had a friend named Bobby Shepherd once,” Stafford said. And he put his head down on the kitchen counter and began to sob.
PART TWO
Epithumia
Irrational Appetite
CHAPTER 10
Illusion
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
—Psalms 23:5
Friday, March 7, 2003
Maui
THERE WOULD BE TWELVE for dinner, two more than anticipated, which was always unsettling. Agnes had planned a smaller party because she wanted to seat everyone at their new table, the one designed by the little Asian woman who made the outdoor pieces for Buzz and Patti’s house. Everyone loved the intricate webs of copper- and bronze-dipped bamboo that made their furniture so unique, and there was consensus that sophisticated buyers were tired of clean lines and ready for more complex elements in outdoor furniture. Agnes, however, had hesitated to order the table for fear Buzz and Patti would feel undermined, but finally she just went ahead and asked them outright and they said why no, of course they had no objections, none at all. So, armed with their blessing, Agnes ordered the new table and ten chairs, all of which arrived the day before her dinner party.
Unfortunately, the guest list had expanded, and she realized she would have to seat a larger party at the long Peruvian ironwood table in the dining room. And since Friday dawned with the sound of a steady rain falling on the roof and the dark look of a sky that would not clear, there was no point in second-guessing the matter. They would sit inside and that would be fine. Agnes reset the table several times until she was satisfied with the look of it and that was fine too, because it gave her an excuse to avoid Stafford, who had done little since Wednesday except sit upstairs in his oversize office and read.
